Why the Men's Rights Movement Is Garbage

[Nine]

173. I think you're wrong.

Traditional feminism is strongly invested in tearing down narrow gender roles. Feminists are just as committed to the idea that boys ought to be able to play with dolls as with the idea that girls ought to be able to play with trucks and footballs. Traditional feminists want men to be accepted as nurses and elementary school teachers and stay-at-home dads as much as we want women to be accepted as CEOs and firefighters. I think a feminist would me more likely than a non-feminist to acknowledge that men can be victims of sexual assault and domestic violence (even if many of us are skeptical of claims that male victims actually outnumber female victims). If you're claiming that feminists don't care about these issues, I think you're very mistaken. (Notice I say "traditional feminism." I think the term "feminism" has much broader meeting than it used to, and some people who call themselves "feminists" hold views very incongruous from what I think of as feminism.)

However, I do think men and women have different experiences. Take sexual harassment in the workplace. Both men and women can be victims of this. But, realistically, they are going to have different issues to deal with. A woman, especially one who's been in the workplace a long time, is a lot more likely to have experienced sexual harassment multiple times over the years, to the extent that she sees it as just something she has to put up with. A man might have a bad experience in one job but isn't likely to face the problem again at his next job. A male victim might have problems with people being less sympathetic to him, maybe even thinking that there's something unmanly about him for complaining about it or not being able to prevent it. They may even see it as a humorous situation. A female victim has a whole different set of concerns, ones that I feel are potentially more serious. I don't feel like I am being unfair to men by acknowledging that.